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Karl Popper and the Idea of Liberal Social Reform

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Karl Popper and the Idea of Liberal Social Reform Karl Popper and the Idea of Liberal Social Reform A paper presented at the Karl Popper Seminar Series anchored by Prof. Jeremy Shearmur, held at the Department of Philosophy, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia. (22nd June, 2011). By Oseni Taiwo Afisi Department of Philosophy Lagos State University, Ojo Email: [email protected] Abstract This paper examines the hypothesis that there is a great deal of plausibility in the equation between a liberal society that aims to achieve a truly open society, and a non-liberal society that desires intellectual openness. For a society to be truly open requires the primacy of individual freedom. The extent to which individuals are free to perform actions that they desire without external constraints, and the level of their individuality in relations to others when performing such actions, remain a contentious issue between liberals and non-liberals. Karl Popper’s critical rationalism provides the necessary impetus to the freedom and individuality that the openness of society entails. Popper’s politics of liberalism provides an effective model of how a truly open society can be achieved. The values inherent to Popper’s liberalism as intellectual openness, individual freedom, mutual respect for others, welfarism, humanitarianism, accountability, critical debates and feedback from the citizens; together thus allow a society to be truly open. Introduction Although there are many competing thoughts as to what openness might be in Popper’s philosophy, this present work does not presume to address them all. The focus here is specifically on using Popper’s idea of critical rationalism to balance relations between liberal politics of individual rights and freedom, and non-liberal politics of the common good advocated by some communitarians such as Charles Taylor (1979), Michael Sandel (1982) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1984). The aim of this paper is to explore Popper’s project of the open society across the plurality and differences of human societies, so that the liberal ideas of individual freedom are not undermined, and the progress of the communitarian idea of the common good is also enhanced. 1 Popper’s philosophy is important to the plausibility of an equation between liberalism and communitarianism because of his unique philosophical development of critical rationalism. One reason that critical rationalism is important to this study is because of the individual and social aspects it entails; the former is explicit while the latter, I will argue, is implicit. Individualistic liberalism and communitarianism are both well accommodated within Popper’s critical rationalism. Popper’s Critical Rationalism Generally speaking, Popper’s critical rationalism is an epistemological philosophy which emphasizes rational criticism or falsification of theories in the natural science and social sciences. Critical rationalism emphasizes the need to be critical of all existing forms of knowledge. It requires every participant in the game of critical discussion to be prepared to listen to criticism, to be able to accept criticism from others, to practice self-criticism, and to engage in mutual criticism with others. (Gattei 2002: 247). Hence, while rational criticism can be located within the realm of the individual, the engagement in mutual criticism with others is in the social realm. Although philosophy of science and political philosophy are different foci of philosophical reflection, both are connected methodologically in Popper’s critical rationalism. In Popper’s view, critical rationalism is the sole method of philosophy, it is the essential method of all rational discussion, and therefore of the sciences as well as of philosophy (Popper 1959:16). Clearly, the central themes of Popper’s philosophy of science and political philosophy, such as; fallibilism, anti-inductivism, hypothetico-deductive methodology, falsificationism, non- inductivist concept of corroboration, concept of verisimilitude, evolutionary epistemology, demarcation criterion, and political liberalism all arise out of his philosophy of critical rationalism. The coherence of critical rationalism is impressive in the application of the critical method in political philosophy of the insights Popper drew from philosophy of science. This paper demonstrates how much science we can apply to politics. Popper’s significance to philosophy of science comes from his idea of a critical method that is applicable across to all fields of (scientific) knowledge. It is this scientific application of critical method to knowledge that Popper also proposed as a model for looking at solutions to problems in human condition which humans should appropriately apply to society. Popper’s importation into political philosophy of the critical method that seems natural to him in philosophy of science is the strength of his philosophical contribution. However, the 2 importation of the method of science to political philosophy is too universalistic in doctrine and in application. My concern is whether the professed universality of what it is to do good science is a mark for, or against, using the same critical method when evaluating proposed solutions to societal problems. I will question several of the themes, features and contents of Popper’s philosophy of science, but I focus on whether the connection of science and politics by the critical method is appropriate. Although, it is necessary to assume in the current investigation that Popper’s critical method in political philosophy can suitably lead us to good political philosophical understanding, I leave open the possibility that Popper’s critical method in philosophy of science is remediable, when we consider the notion of confirmation within the context of several testing of hypothesis. In addition to raising the well documented shortcoming in Popper’s philosophy of science I evaluate in this presentation the potential enduring worth of critical rationalism, particularly at it concerns politics which is suitable for proper democratic social reconstruction. My mission is to suggest Popper’s critical rationalism in order to show the continued relevance of his ideas in contemporary political philosophy. Popper, in turning from philosophy of science to political philosophy, had certain ideas in mind about the kind of open society that was anchored in liberal politics. His form of liberalism characterizes only of a certain kind of individualism which seems unsuitable for societies that are non-liberal. However, I argue that Popper’s liberalism entails social aspects as well as individual one, and the former should be applicable to non-liberal political philosophical strands as well as to liberalism. The position I argue is that while there is an explicit theme of individualism in Popper’s liberalism promoting the values of individual liberty and equality, it has an implicit social element by virtue of the emphasis in mutual criticisms with others and mutual respects for others that shapes his philosophy of critical rationalism. As mentioned above, Popper’s critical rationalism is itself a product of both the individual and the social. The thesis that I defend in this paper is that the individualism in Popper’s philosophy of politics is a commitment which follows from an analysis starting from the position of the individual rather than the community. Such a commitment does not, I argue, entail a disregard for community values of social relation or any selfless voluntary action that would benefit the community. This position challenges many Popper critics, such as Fred Eidlin, who see as the blind spot in Popper’s political thought—“the problem of community” (Eidlin 1997: 2). 3 Liberal Social Reform In arguing for a valid recognition of the explicit individualism and the implicit social element that are inherent in Popper’s liberal politics, it is clear that this argument would also aid the appropriate application of his liberal ideas to political philosophical strands that are non-liberal. Modifying the argument in this way would significantly enhance Popper’s project of the open society within liberal and non-liberal politics. This would particularly be in the use in non- liberal political philosophies with communitarian ideals as it would return social unity in general. The philosophical strand of Popper’s critical rationalism is laid out in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), and Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963). They contain some of the central themes of critical rationalism in science as well as in his political philosophy. Popper’s other texts such as The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Vols.1 & 2, and The Poverty of Historicism (1957), contain the ideas that explicitly articulate Popper’s defence of liberalism and the intellectual openness of society over against historicism: the belief in making predictions of the events of social development; and totalitarian ideologies that, according to Popper, were defended by the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx. Popper labelled these three philosophers enemies of “the open society” and insisted that philosophy needed to be saved from such “false prophets” (Popper 1945b:229). The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism also contain Popper’s application of the critical method of science to social reform. In these works, Popper defended what he termed piecemeal social engineering in direct opposition to utopian social engineering (Popper 1945a: 1, 1957 section 21: 64-70).
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